Using Organizational Psychology to Build a Winning Team
Your success as a business owner is often defined by your team’s performance. Before joining Mahogany Builders, my journey to the remodeling industry took a unique path through the study of Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology.
As a leader, an understanding of I/O Psychology, a field that studies human behavior in the workplace, can be invaluable to you.
At its core, I/O Psychology examines how individual differences, organizational structures, and workplace dynamics influence employee engagement, satisfaction, and overall business outcomes.
In our industry, where every project presents new challenges and opportunities, applying I/O Psychology principles has been a game-changer, enabling us to enhance our operations and create a culture that is “sticky,” keeping top employees engaged and motivated.
Understanding Individual Motivators
Consider for a moment, the two or three most important members of your team. What motivated them to join your team?
Some employees may be driven by designing bold, unique spaces, turning homes into magazine-worthy works of art. Some might enjoy the thrill of problem-solving, while others might simply enjoy working with their hands.
Applying I/O Psychology principles has been a game-changer, enabling us to enhance our operations and create a culture that is “sticky,” keeping top employees engaged and motivated.
Your ability to recognize and nurture those individual motivators will allow you to keep your most important team members fulfilled and engaged.
A central focus of I/O Psychology is the study of individual differences and how they impact the strength or productivity of a team. How do you uncover and interpret those differences, like motivators, on your team?
The Importance of Person and Job Fit
Adopting an I/O Psychologist’s perspective means designing roles to achieve your company’s objectives and filling those positions with the individuals best fit to maximize each role’s potential.
Your goal should be to design roles and workload distributions that balance maximizing contribution to your company’s objectives with setting the occupant up for success.
So, how do you decide who is the right person for the right role? Do you trust your gut?
While your instincts are integral to the hiring process, I/O Psychologists utilize selection assessments to assist in efficiently and objectively predicting candidates’ potential for future success.
Though many such tools exist, at Mahogany Builders we use the DISC assessment in evaluating person/job fit. This brief questionnaire illustrates one’s relative levels of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. One version of the DISC allows the hiring manager to take the assessment beforehand, creating a profile of an ideal candidate against which real-world candidates could be compared.
We took the DISC assessment as a team and had a specialist deliver the results to us together. It was one of our best team building activities ever. Learning about ourselves and each other’s DISC profiles helped our team to better understand why we act the way we do. The empathy and understanding we reached through that exercise has endured to this day.
Using Personality Assessments
When you reach the end of an interview process, there is tremendous pressure to hire one of the candidates that have stood out from the pool.
During a recent search for an Office Administrator, we were lucky to have over 250 applicants. After narrowing the field to two final candidates, we made the painful decision not to hire either one.
Despite the urgency often felt at the end of a recruitment drive, utilizing an assessment such as the DISC can provide you with additional objective information, which can help you make the right hire, or not make the hire at all!
Trust your gut, but make sure to feed it all the data you can.
Becoming a “Sticky” Organization
Consciously or not, as the leader of your team, you reinforce your culture with every move you make. The “-ates” of leadership tell us that your culture is defined by what you celebrate, what you tolerate, and what you demonstrate.
Greater attention to these ”-ates” can help you align your culture on paper with your culture in practice and help your organization become a sticky one.
Every action you take to build employee commitment makes your organization stickier, or harder to leave. Reinvesting in your team through ongoing training/professional development initiatives demonstrates your long-term commitment to them and fosters their commitment to you.
Effective continuing education/professional development programs meet your team where they are, delivering rewarding, relevant content that caters to learning styles that can be as varied as their individual motivators.
The journey towards a more productive and engaged team begins with an understanding of the human elements, which drive success in our industry.
In a crowded industry where great employees are hard to find and harder to keep, embracing I/O Psychology principles can significantly enhance your competitive advantage.
